Film Review: E-Demon (2018)

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SYNOPSIS:

A group of friends (from different parts of the country) talking to each other via webcam are stalked and killed by a demon that is determined to bring Satan to Earth.

REVIEW:

I wanted to like E-Demon, I truly did but after about ten minutes of watching it I found out that was going to be a very hard thing to do. I’ll give it to the people behind it as they at least tried something different and I applaud them for attempting to do something new and unique, but sadly they just didn’t succeed. I thought that E-Demon was a boring, uninteresting mess of a film and I had a hard time getting into it for several reasons.

Without a doubt this movie has its share of problems. For one, it just isn’t that interesting in general to be quite honest. We have a group of unlikable people chatting online with one another with web cams and after what seems like several years of build up an unseen demon (that can possess people) shows up and starts killing them all off as they try frantically to figure out a way to stop it. On paper this may sound like an intriguing idea, but it just didn’t work for many reasons and at about the halfway point of the movie I just didn’t care anymore and just wanted it to be over. Most of the movie consists of a bunch of annoying people rambling on about uninteresting and unimportant things before anything slightly interesting happens and even when the demon finally shows up it doesn’t really do anything that amazing or memorable. I just watched this movie last night and can barely remember most of it which is never a good sign.

The way it was shot doesn’t work either and gets very annoying very quickly. The entire film takes place on the different characters’ web cams and we see what is taking place on a computer screen from each of their perspectives. Sound confusing and convoluted? Believe me, it is. There is just way too much going on and it is hard to keep up with things for the most part (especially when the instant messages start popping up, something that happens way too often). If you aren’t a fan of films that incorporate a split screen the entire time, then you are not going to like E-Demon at all. I actually ended up getting a headache while watching this movie and have a feeling that a lot of other viewers out there will as well. While shooting the movie in this manner may have seemed like a great idea in writer/director’s Jeremy Wechter’s head it just doesn’t work and makes the film almost unwatchable as a result.

Did I mention that the characters are extremely annoying and that the acting is mighty bad? I didn’t like a single character that appeared in the movie and didn’t care if any of them lived or died. As I said earlier, for most of the movie they don’t really do anything but talk about things no one really cares about, bicker with each other, and complain about random things. They are all so unlikable I can’t really see any viewers out there relating to any of them or feeling the need to root for them at any point during the movie. I was ready for most of them to die a few seconds after they popped up on screen and after they were killed off I didn’t miss a single one of them and was actually glad I didn’t have to look at them anymore. None of the people portraying the characters can act and at times it is almost as if some of them are literally reading their lines from offscreen cue cards that have been placed out of camera range.

I wasn’t a fan of E-Demon. It was poorly-written, mind-numbingly boring, and just all over the place in general. It was very difficult to keep track of what was going on most of the time and is more than a little hard to follow as a result. The characters in it are all just a bunch of unlikeable stereotypes and the ending is just laughably bad. To be brutally honest this movie is nothing more than an Unfriended wannabe and even though I am not particularly fond of those movies either they are slightly superior to this disjointed mess of a film. I can’t say that I enjoyed the time I spent with E-Demon and don’t think that any other viewers out there that give it a shot will either. Do yourself a favor and skip it because you aren’t missing anything by doing so.